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Boulder Hunt!

Pixie

Pixie

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2011
Messages
374
Location
NH
Occupation
remodeling
When I was working at facing and supporting the big embankment in front of my house, a friend at the other end of my dirt road offered to bring a load of pesky rocks and place them with his truck mounted log loader. Sounded great ! I got home one day and the rocks had arrived but his loader didn't reach the bottom of the embankment and when he let them go, they rolled some and were all about 5 feet from the bottom edge. Nothing I could do about it as my backhoe didn't reach either.

A few years went by and I suddenly had a porkupine infestation. Logs and brush and stuff had fallen on the rocks ( mostly 4' diameter ) and the porkies had set up camp. Fortunately, a couple of years later, the neighbors were adding on to thier house and needed to get rid of fill and I had it dumped over the embankment to fill in around the rocks. Haven't bothered to face it again.
 
R

RTSmith

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 23, 2008
Messages
421
Location
Middle Tenn.
Occupation
Amateur demolition & dirt pusher
Aig, keep us in the loop. My wife has had her eyes on a project just like that for years. I occasionally see the Pinterest picture of somebody's natural pool. Except, I have lots and lots of limestone rocks around which is what made her start the idea anyway. So not to hijack your rock thread, but keep us up on your progress please.

FWIW- My Cat 420D has some BIG hooks on the top of the bucket for hang on forks. I've found the forks aren't good for large rocks because they are too far out there, but I have moved many large rocks by getting as much in the bucket as I can and then wrapping a chain around the hooks and rock and tilt the bucket back. On my farm, OSHA doesn't come by much. :) Put the machine in 4WD and head on. 4WD because the back wheels may not touch ground much. Can't lift high, but you can move them around the place OK. As I recall, I can lift more rock that way than my Case 586 forklift can.
 
C

cuttin edge

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 9, 2014
Messages
2,720
Location
NB Canada
Occupation
Finish grader operator
Our big stuff comes out of our quarry if needed for specific jobs. You always get oversized rock in a blast, too big for the crusher, so it is set aside. If we need a lot, a little tweaking in the drill pattern, and detonation timing and you get lots of big stuff. We are doing a shoreline protection job now. 10,000 ton of 4 to 5 foot rock. Nothing like 30 ton in a tri axle dump trailer hanging on till the last second then all coming out at once to bring you around first thing in the morning. Thank God for high lift tail gates
 
D

DIYDAVE

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2007
Messages
2,416
Location
MD
That reminds me of a scene I saw take place, a few miles, from here, some messicans were unloading boulders with a toro dingo stand-on loader, and I watched them chain and drag a boulder off the side of the flat bed f-450, or whatever truck, they were usin. Soon as the rock, and the forks cleared the side of the truck bed, the operator flew up and into the truck bed, woulda cleared the whole truck, iffn'n the other side rack had been off! THe things you see, when you don't have a camera handy!;)
 
aighead

aighead

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2019
Messages
2,563
Location
Dayton, OH
Jonas302 said:
Perfectly legal thats how you get rid of the damn things just let them blow off on a corner in front of Aighead place :)
Click to expand...
I'd happily give you my address to do so, but I'd rather not see a big old Boulder roll past the house like that other picture!

RTSmith - I will, though I think the 5 year plan we came up with about 3 years ago, to get this going, may have been ambitious. There's a billion expensive ways to make a pond work and I'm broke most of the time. I'm leaning towards billboard vinyl as my liner, but even that looks to be about $2k just to get started. I've learned loads now it'll take motivation and energy I can't seem to find very often. And I didn't start a hundred bonsai trees 20 years ago to place around either... Oh yeah, also thanks, I've been trying to think of ways to move these rocks once they are all here. I don't mind going slow and I'm sure some will be too big to pick up but I think I'm with you on how to roll them up into the bucket.
 
colson04

colson04

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 11, 2016
Messages
2,086
Location
Delton, Michigan
I wish I had a picture, but that was before I had a camera phone. About 12 years ago I was plowing a field for my grandpa and the chisel plow damn near leapt out of the field. I've found plenty of rocks plowing, but never one that tripped 3/4 of the shanks. I go get a skid steer with rock bucket and start digging around trying to find an edge. After I got to 4 ft diameter I quit and called Grandpa. He has my uncle bring the backhoe out to dig it up. The rock was around 8 ft across and not coming out. So he digs the biggest, deepest hole he can with that old hoe, undermines the boulder and buries it. Hopefully we will never see that one again, but if we do, we've got an excavator now that will put her down even deeper.
 
Bumpsteer

Bumpsteer

Senior Member
Joined
Sep 2, 2009
Messages
1,340
Location
Front seat on the Struggle Bus
Occupation
Mechanical designer
A long passed friend had an excavating business....the 690B was on a pond job. Farmer next door asks the operator if he has time to dig up a rock....Doug ok'ed it and the operator went at it....got it exposed and he couldn't move it. Phone calls are made...farmer tells Doug he can have it if he gets it out.
Getting late in the day, beer has been flowing and a challenge has been issued.
A ramp for the lowbed is dug next to the rock, another is dug perpendicular, so the 5 yard loader can push.
A trip to the pit for the loader and a stop for more beer is made.
We finally got that damned rock on the lowbed and chained down at 1:00am.
Down the road we went, crossing the scale at the grain elevator just for grins, one could see the readout thru the window, only 12k over.
Finally got it home, safe and sound. Doug put it in the front yard.

Ed
 
aighead

aighead

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2019
Messages
2,563
Location
Dayton, OH
Welp, my first, in earnest, boulder hunt in my own back yard was, basically, fruitless. I went back to the back 40 (really back 2) and found nothing bigger than a basketball, most were slightly bigger than a softball... You can't win every time I guess. I fished for a long time and never caught anything, it's kind of like that...
 
Pixie

Pixie

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2011
Messages
374
Location
NH
Occupation
remodeling
Well, that's discouraging !
I bet if you truly 'needed ' to bury, say, a waterline, you would find a whole line of rocks LOL But maybe that's just the way it is around here :)
 
aighead

aighead

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2019
Messages
2,563
Location
Dayton, OH
Hahaha! No that sounds exactly right! Looking at the pile of maybe 10 small rocks I got today versus the 2'x4' I got a couple weeks ago was kind of sad. There are a couple weird whitish ones?
 
R

Ronsii

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 26, 2011
Messages
3,464
Location
Western Washington
Occupation
s/e Heavy equipment operator
See if you can find a buddy :) with GPR ground penetrating radar... should easy to find rocks then ...
 
Pixie

Pixie

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2011
Messages
374
Location
NH
Occupation
remodeling
If they are solid white, usually with a flat side, I'd guess quartz. Mottled, mixed up coloring might be granite. Just guessing by what we find around here. The rocks here often get discolored by the iron in the soil.
 
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